Monday, August 4, 2008

New books

I lazed about for most of the weekend. I painted a bit, read a bit, refereed between the cats, slept in late, took naps: in short, a great weekend. In one of my few forays outside of the house, I went to the Half Price Books in nearby Everett, WA for a bit of a browse. To my surprise, I found a very good used copy of Yann le Bohec's The Imperial Roman Army for a mere $14.95.

I've only browsed it so far and read the introduction. It looks like an informative read--not as ripping as a P.G. Wodehouse story, but lots of charts and other information that will surely make me smarter than my friends in regards to all things Roman army-ish. It will make a nice addition to the numerous Roman army books I already have.

Another nice find at Half Price was Duncan Campbell's Besieged: Siege warfare in the Ancient World. This book starts in the Achaemenid period and proceeds by periods through to the later Roman empire. It's actually a combination of four Osprey titles in one and well illustrated throughout, as one expects from Osprey (the same wonderful people who bring us Field of Glory).

Finally, on Saturday, my copy of Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World by Philip Sabin arrived from Amazon. I was browsing through older copies of The Slingshot last week, when I came across an article by Sabin where he mentions this book and his approach of examining ancient battles through "comparative dynamic modeling." I've only just started, so I can't say too much about it now, but I'm intrigued by the approach, which draws upon Sabin's wargaming background.